Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Frank Iodice

parents and teachers, who tried everything to make her pay attention and study something. To no avai l. Mel i Montreux was ungovernable: besides physical ly dragging her, there was no way to get her to go to school. She wore her hair short in a man’s haircut that she got on purpose at the barber in the Panier, Rue de l ’Evêché, next to the bakery belonging to the big Moroccan lady, where as a girl she used to steal anise navettes—Marsei l le, city of free people and free hair, she didn’t let hers grow out unti l she was twenty. Someone l ike Mel i , when you met her, gave you the feel ing of racing on the highway a shiny l ittle car, and passing someone on the right whi le playing music with the volume up al l the way. At the same time, just because she had so rel ished those years of escaping institutions, she now demonstrated, with her lapses into si lence and the serene gaze of someone who knows what she’s looking at, that she was more than ever trustworthy when it came to minors, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten that position in L’Escarène. So, we would have had a lot to talk about, if we’d known each other ’s stories. It would have been the simplest thing but, perhaps because of those mechanisms of repression that restrain our speech every time we open our mouths, we didn’t do it. The house on the Corniche des Ol iviers was on a cl iff

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